July 12, 2023
MATT DORAN: Shadow Minister for Home Affairs James Paterson also happens to be the chair of that committee, and he joined me in the studio. James Paterson, welcome back to Afternoon Briefing. You've been hearing testimony today from the nation's intelligence agencies as to how they view some of the social media platforms and their operations. Anything surprising that you learned today?
JAMES PATERSON: Well not really. It's consistent with the advice that they've been providing for some time, which is that these apps collect an enormous amount of information on their users. In the case of TikTok, it seeks to access your contact book, your calendar or other apps that are installed on your phone, your face print, your voice print, the Wi-Fi networks that you've logged into. Extraordinary levels of detail on its users. That's an elevated concern because they're not just collecting that information, but they're subject to the control, the extrajudicial control of an authoritarian foreign government. So it's a confluence of those two things; collection of data, control by a foreign authoritarian government, in this case the Chinese government that means it's of such high concern. And that's why the government took the decision early this year following our friends and partners to ban it from all government users. That doesn't solve the problem, though, for the six or seven million Australians who are still using the application, and that's where our committee comes in and our recommendations to the parliament.
DORAN: So when you're talking about these apps, clearly TikTok gets a lot of attention here, but it's not just TikTok that does gather this sort of information. The concern around TikTok is clearly because of where it is owned, the location of its owners there. But when it comes to other apps that people are using as well, do those concerns still exist about just how much data is being collected?
PATERSON: Absolutely, both on the data collection side and the possible foreign interference side, because even those Western headquartered social media platforms, which ultimately are beholden to liberal democratic governments in rule of law jurisdictions, they're still vulnerable to authoritarian governments trying to get on there and game their algorithms by pumping them full of disinformation. So, we're looking at that problem closely, too. And of course, when it comes to those authoritarian headquartered platforms, it's not just TikTok, WeChat is another one which some experts say is of greater concern even than TikTok because of the proliferation of censorship, surveillance and foreign interference content on the platform.
DORAN: When we're talking about how these platforms are operating in countries like Australia, did the intelligence agencies raise any concerns beyond just that broader, you know, collection of data, that broader surveillance about particularly targeting certain groups of citizens?
PATERSON: Yes, we certainly have discussed the way in which political dissidents or activists, often journalists, researchers and others have been targeted on those platforms, particularly for transnational repression or coercion. We've heard evidence from individuals who've experienced this themselves, including, Vicky Xu a former researcher at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, who's done a lot of ground-breaking work on the atrocities against the Uyghur people in Xinjiang and has been ruthlessly and relentlessly targeted online for harassment and coercion to try and silence her and to stop her engaging in this. And really as a nation, we need to do more to protect people like Vicki, who should be absolutely free to engage in this kind of research or journalism in Australia, as should others who are engaging in political activism on those issues. And at the moment, I don't think there's enough processes and policies in place to protect those people.
DORAN: Today, you were grilling the intelligence agencies themselves. Yesterday was the turn of the social media companies to actually explain their practices and their procedures. Did you find they were forthcoming with that sort of information?
PATERSON: There was an enormous variety of responses from the platforms. Some of them were quite honest and upfront and shared as best they could, companies like Google and YouTube and LinkedIn and Meta in that category. Others were much more difficult to get any sort of clarification out of at all, and TikTok was very much in that category. The TikTok witnesses weren't able to tell me whether or not the company was Chinese-owned. They weren't able to tell me where their headquarters was, where their employees were. They really were reluctant to share any information at all. After a long, extended series of questions, they finally admitted that they do employ engineers in China who do have access to Australian user data, who can also make remote changes to the algorithm in TikTok, and
that they are subject to the national security laws of China and therefore could be compelled to cooperate with the Chinese government. But they expected us to believe that they would break Chinese law rather than hand over the data of an Australian user, and that is just not a credible proposition at all.
DORAN: Some of those social media companies that did show up, clearly they've gone through the Senate grilling that you and your colleagues have inflicted upon them, but one that hasn't shown up is WeChat. Yesterday you were very critical of the fact that they haven't engaged with the committee since that spray, for want of a better word. Have you heard anything from them?
PATERSON: The only thing I've heard from WeChat is they have continuously refused to appear before the committee, and that's extremely disappointing. They have a significant user base in Australia. It's estimated to be up to a million Australians. It is particularly popular in the Chinese Australian diaspora community for whom it is often an indispensable tool communicating with family and friends back at home, whether they want to be on the platform or not. Some feel that they have to be because that's the only means of doing so. So for WeChat to show disrespect for the Parliament in Australia by not showing up and not answering our questions, I think is a very serious problem. Now, had it been any of the other platforms, I could have used the power of the Senate to compel them to appear. But in the case of WeChat it doesn't have any Australian legal presence at all, it has no employees in Australia, and so that option wasn't available to me. And I think that is highlighting a real public policy problem here, that we have people that can have influence in our democracy and have many users in Australia but are not subject to the oversight of our democracy. And I think we have to fix that.
DORAN: Now you are the Shadow Home Affairs Minister, but at the moment you're also the Acting Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister. So this next question for you is in that regard as well. Looking bit further afield and away from this area, the negotiations over the EU-Australia Free Trade Agreement appear to have reached another stalemate. Does the Opposition welcome the fact that it appears the Government is prepared to walk away rather than throw Australian producers under the bus?
PATERSON: We certainly should not agree to a substandard deal with the European Union if the only offer on the table is not good enough in terms of market access for Australian farmers and also in terms of issues like geographic indicators where they seek to control trade terms that we use, including Prosecco here in Australia, then we shouldn't agree to it. But it is disappointing because the Albanese government said they would secure this agreement. They said they'd do so within the first year. They failed to do so. It's a very complex agreement and they were critical of the previous government for not having finalised it and I think they are discovering themselves that a free trade agreement with the European Union is not an easy thing to negotiate. In Canada's case, it took them seven years to do so. I really hope it doesn't take that long in this case, because it is a really important part of diversifying our international trade and opening up many other markets as the previous government successfully did, not only with China but also Japan and South Korea and many other countries around the world.
DORAN: And given the complexity of a deal like this and the complex nature of dealings within the EU itself, it does have a lot of policies in place that do not exactly lend themselves well to free trade deals with any country, let alone Australia. Are you suggesting that the Coalition would have had any better luck here, or is it more just an awakening or an epiphany that the Labour Government is experiencing?
PATERSON: What I'm suggesting is that it's equally difficult for parties of any political flavour to secure an agreement like this, which is not what the Albanese Government and the Labor party said when they were in Opposition. When they were first elected, they thought that, they said they would sort this out really quickly and they haven't. And that just shows that this is challenging jurisdiction to negotiate with. I mean the UK Free Trade Agreement under our government was done in record time. It's an extremely high quality agreement which shows the virtue of being able to negotiate directly with the UK now that it's outside the European Union and its trade policy is for it to determine and not for the bloc to determine as a group. And that's why it's so much easier to secure those kind of bilateral agreements as we also did with India.
DORAN: James Paterson, thanks for your time. Thank you.
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